'Indecipherable Gobbledygook.' Wonkagenda For Tues., April 9, 2019

Morning Wonketariat! Here's some of the things we may be talking about today.

In a move to clear out all the non-loyal DEEP STATE bureaucrats keeping the country from falling apart, Trump has "You're Fired" the director of the Secret Service, and is rumored to be "You're Fired"-ing senior Homeland Security officials. The decapitation stems from Trump's shitfits over immigration and his inability to stop the taco truck invasion at the southern border. Over on the Hill Republicans are freaking out, and Chuck Grassley is actually telling WaPo that Trump's done nothing but fuck up for two years, adding of that little viper Stephen Miller, "I think it would be hard for him to demonstrate he's accomplished anything for the president ... It's pretty hard to elaborate on it when there hasn't been any accomplishments."

The Chinese woman caught snooping around Mar-a-Lago with malware, a laptop and cell phones hasn't been called a spy (yet), but prosecutors say she "lies to everyone she encounters." A search of her Florida hotel room turned up fat stacks of cash, a handful of SIM cards, nine more USB drives, and a slew of off-the-shelf hardware that could be easily used in spy craft, like signal sniffers that can find hidden cameras.

A federal judge has temporarily stopped a Trump policy forcing asylum seekers to fart around Mexico while hoping and praying for their day in immigration court. In a 27-page ruling, the judge avoided making a political statement, arguing that the policy clashes with the Immigration and Nationality Act, the Administrative Procedures Act and other things that protect immigrants from being deported back to "shithole countries" where they could be murdered.

CNN has the final days of Kirstjen Nielsen at Trump's White House before she was quit-fired. A few weeks ago Trump tried to shut down the port of El Paso, but Nielsen opened her mouth and told Trump it was a bad idea. Trump then continued to throw a tantrum about asylum-seeking Mexican Muslims invading the southern border with their taco trucks, and Nielsen had to suggest it would be (very) illegal to deny asylum-seekers entry -- even after Trump instructed Border Patrol agents to tell immigrants, "Our country is full," and to disobey the rulings of judges who say otherwise. Everything finally came to a head on Sunday when Trump tried to reinstate his family separation policy, and the two finally agreed that "This isn't working out."

GOOD NEWS! We're not exactly sure how this happened, but Trump re-nominated Mary Rowland to the federal bench. Rowland is the first openly gay woman to be nominated -- let alone re-nominated -- to a federal court. She'd been nominated during the last congressional session, but the judicial bottleneck has forced all the unconfirmed judges to start the whole process again. You can thank senators Tammy Duckworth and Dick Durbin for this one!

BAD NEWS! Dozens of new cases of measles have been confirmed by US health officials. Even though it was practically eradicated, anti-vaxxers have brought the number of confirmed outbreaks up to 465, with 78 new cases in the last week alone.

NASA, the DOD, NOAA, and several other federal agencies are signaling they have no intention of participating in an initiative to deny climate change. Later today the House Oversight Committee will hold a hearing with former Secretary of State John Kerry and former Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel where they're expected to testify about the national security threat posed by an angry Mother Nature. In a related story, the Trump administration told McClatchy that it's interested in so-called carbon capture technology, which is ... better than nothing ... I guess.

Republican reps Jim Jordan and Mark Meadows have sent letters to 12 major pharmaceutical companies telling them not to comply with House Oversight chair Elijah Cummings request for documents. The Freedom fuckers argue that Cummings is attempting to nuke stock prices of big pharma by leaking mean things to the press like a common Nunes. The letter Jordan and Meadows have sent out selectively misquotes old remarks made by Cummings where he states his interest in "saving the taxpayers money."

WaPo gossips that Trump and House Judiciary Chair Jerry Nadler have been beefing since the 1980s when Nadler began squashing Trump's shady land deals. Back then, Trump tried to screw poor people in Nadler's district with some sketchy real estate deal but Nadler killed it in the crib. Trump tried to claim victory by calling Nadler "fat," to which Nadler's office noted that he himself, "never went bankrupt and had to spend his father's fortune to keep his family's business afloat."

Georgia Republicans introduced a bill in the state legislature to create a state "Journalism Ethics Board" that would effectively spy on journalists, forcing them to turn over notes and recordings or face steep fines and jail time. LOL, fuck you, Georgia, #LockMeUp!

A very pregnant woman in Augusta, Georgia, was given a ticket after her three-year-old peed in the parking lot of a gas station. The officer cited the woman for disorderly conduct, writing, "I observed the male's genitals and the urination," after the woman tried to explain that she's due to give birth any day, and the kid is three.

Former Illinois Rep. Luis Gutierrez cut a deal with outgoing Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel to make Gutierrez's daughter a city alderman, but things didn't exactly work out the way either expected, according to Block Club. Gutierrez's daughter, Jessica, declined to take the kickback and opted to run for the seat during the recent elections as a DSA candidate. Jessica ultimately lost, but not before she pissed off The Machine, scared the incumbent alderman, Ariel Reboyras, and ruined his chance at a cushy retirement job. This is some brilliant reporting if you ever wanted to know the ins and outs of #ChicagoPolitics.

UK conservatives are shitposting anti-Muslim garbage all over social media, leading to the suspension of at least 50 Tory members. Buzzfeed reports that these Islamophobes are attempting to nuke Brexit, and the rise of Sajid Javid, an Islamic MP poised to take over the conservative Tories who currently serves as the Home Secretary.

You guys, hi, hello, it is almost the holiday weekend, so we are going to share you a real video posted last night by "Doctor" Sebastian "Don't Call Me A Nazi" Gorka, that hilarious old knucklecuck. We guess now that he had to give up (or gave up voluntarily!) his Fox News contract, he just makes videos for the Twitter. Hoo ... ray?

Anyway, Gorka is super-excited that Donald Trump issued that order last night, giving Bill Barr all kinds of new powers to expose the Deep State for what it is and PROVE once and for all that the gremlins who live inside Trump's diarrhea are correct when they say Hillary ordered the Deep State to do an illegal witch hunt to Trump, yadda yadda yadda, you've seen these people huff paint before, we don't have to type it all.

Here is the video, after which Wonkette will either transcribe it OR we will provide our own dramatic interpretation. Which one will it be? We don't know! Would you be able to tell the difference between the two? We don't know!

We want to say right here at the outset that we hate Julian Assange. Aside from the sexual assault allegations against him, and aside from the fact that he's just a generally stinky and loathsome person who reportedly smeared poop on the walls at the Ecuadorian embassy in London, while reportedly not taking care of his cat, an innocent creature, he acted as Russia's handmaiden during the 2016 election, in order to further Russia's campaign to steal it for Donald Trump. All signs point to his campaign being a success!

So we are justifiably happy when bad things happen to Julian Assange. We are happy his name is shit the world over, and that any reputation WikiLeaks used to have for being on the side of freedom and transparency has been stuffed down the toilet where it belongs. We are happy he looked like such a sad-ass loser when the Ecuadorian embassy finally kicked him out and he was arrested.

And quite frankly, we were OK with the initial charge against him recently unsealed in the Eastern District of Virginia. If you'll remember, he was charged with trying to help Chelsea Manning hack a password into the Defense Department, which is not what journalists do. Journalists do not drive the get-away car for sources. Journalists do not hold their sources' hair back while they're stealing classified intel. Assange is essentially accused of doing all that.

Now, put all that aside. Because -- and this is key -- journalists do publish secrets they are provided by sources. That's First Amendment, chapter and verse, American as fucking apple pie and fast-food-induced diabetes. And that is what much of the superseding indictment of Assange unsealed yesterday was about. (And nope, it wasn't about anything regarding Assange's ratfucking the 2016 election or Hillary's emails. Why would the Trump Justice Department prosecute anything about that? It's all about the older Chelsea Manning stuff, the stuff the Obama Justice Department considered charging Assange with, but ultimately declined, because of that little thing called the First Amendment.)